The Sandalwood Tree
A Novel
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3.7 • 23 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From incredible storyteller and nationally bestselling author Elle Newmark comes a rich, sweeping novel that brings to life two love stories, ninety years apart, set against the backdrop of war-torn India.
In 1947, an American anthropologist named Martin Mitchell wins a Fulbright Fellowship to study in India. He travels there with his wife, Evie, and his son, determined to start a new chapter in their lives. Upon the family’s arrival, though, they are forced to stay in a small village due to violence surrounding Britain’s imminent departure from India. It is there, hidden behind a brick wall in their colonial bungalow, that Evie discovers a packet of old letters that tell a strange and compelling story of love and war involving two young Englishwomen who lived in the very same house in 1857.
Drawn to their story, Evie embarks on a mission to uncover what the letters didn’t explain. Her search leads her through the bazaars and temples of India as well as the dying society of the British Raj. Along the way, a dark secret is exposed, and this new and disturbing knowledge creates a wedge between Evie and her husband. Bursting with lavish detail and vivid imagery of Bombay and beyond, The Sandalwood Tree is a powerful story about betrayal, forgiveness, fate, and love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Newmark's (The Book of Unholy Mischief) evocative writing takes center stage in her second novel, set mostly in 1947 India, on the eve of partition. When Martin is awarded a Fulbright to study Indian politics, he, Evie, and their young son, Billy, move to Delhi. Evie hopes that India will allow Martin, troubled since returning from WWII, to rediscover himself and reinvest in their marriage, but it doesn't turn out that way. She feels isolated by his lingering detachment and by the cultural divide between the Indians and the British, but her discovery of a parcel of letters written nearly a century earlier consumes her life. Driven to determine what happened to the two Englishwomen behind the correspondence, her research eventually uncovers an intimate journal written by one of them, and this discovery gives Newmark's book an absorbing and welcome historical context. Though Evie and Martin's own story ends abruptly, Newmark deftly illustrates the cultural parallels of both eras, and blends the two narratives well.
